


Not A Hero

by NevillesGran



Series: Storm King AU [5]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Adam and Lilith Clay, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bangladesh DuPree - Freeform, Gen, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach - Freeform, Klaus Wulfenbach - Freeform, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tags edited as fic progresses, assorted OCs - Freeform, implied canonical character death, other characters (cameos only) include:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-22 21:03:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there had been no time window in Beetlesburg that day, so Agatha never lost her locket...a <em>lot</em> might have gone differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beetlesburg

**Author's Note:**

> A.k.a.: what Agatha was doing while Gil and Tarvek were busy with...Politics, and etc.
> 
> Note: This AU is hereby based on TWO changes to canon: in addition to there having been no time window, Klaus and Gil came to Beetlesburg about 2 months later than in canon. This is almost entirely so I can have the circus appropriately nearby later. Remember that "Not A Wild Goose Chase" is non-canon in specifics but I'm leaving it up to reassure y'all that I'm still going in that direction.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything goes wrong.

It started out as a perfectly normal day—though didn’t they all? Agatha was nearly late to the lab, and that was normal. Professor Glassvitch was kind about it, which was normal—though one of the small blessings Agatha counted on each day. Her latest attempt at invention failed as soon as they turned it on, which was also. perfectly. normal.

Then Dr. Merlot marched in, scathing and snappish, and that was perfectly normal as well, except the thing he was snapping about today was the Baron come to check their progress of the Dinoxulator—finally, weeks late. But they _still_ didn’t have it working. (“They” being a term to mean Merlot and Glassvitch, and sometimes Dr. Beetle; Agatha mostly fetched coffee and did her best to keep the lab-space neat without breaking anything. She generally failed at even that.)

Dr. Merlot ordered her to get the lab clean while he and Dr. Glassvitch tidied up other loose ends, and Agatha felt like despairing until she remembered that the storage closet was still mostly empty. Because most of it was, in fact, spread out across the tables and benches and floor, but that could be remedied. She had half an hour. There was a chance.

Until halfway through, when the complexity of fitting everything in started giving her a headache, and she had to back away from the rapid spatial calculations she _wished_ she could make because nothing would be worse than if the doctors returned with the master and the Baron to find her crying in a heap on the floor. Or, it could be worse (there were always the jars in the courtyard), but it could hardly be less embarrassing.

She tried to remind herself of that when the Baron commented dryly that perhaps they could have finished the Dinoxulator if they tried working somewhere without odds and ends of equipment pushed against every wall. It didn’t help much.

At least when the Baron’s son yanked the closet open to find the plans she’d (messed up again and) buried, there was only enough falling jumble to knock him back a little, rather than bury him completely.

But then it turned out that the Baron had never even meant to Dinoxulator to work at all, and for a moment she wished the mess in the closet _had_ crushed his Gilgamesh. How _dare_ he put everyone to work so hard, for _months_ , for—

Pain lanced through her skull. Agatha covered her face with a soft cry. Dr. Merlot took the opportunity to back off from yelling at Dr. Beetle to shout at her instead (normal.) By the time she could focus again, Dr. Beetle was offering the Baron a quick tour of the facilities, and perhaps a late breakfast. In passing, he suggested Agatha go home now, if she was feeling poorly.

She wasn’t really feeling worse than usual, but the embarrassment was horrible, and she accepted the offer gratefully. She could at least go curl up in the library until her afternoon class began. Everyone filed out of the lab.

.

(Merlot lagged behind, seething with resentment and rage. The Baron used them; the “master” went along with it; he, Dr. Silas Merlot, PhD, was _never_ appreciated…. So what if he wasn’t a spark? He _deserved_ some respect _anyway_.

Well he’d show them. He’d show them _all_. He could expose Beetle, embarrass the Baron, and perhaps even get them all _utterly destroyed_ —and be gone before anyone suspected! Where? Why, Paris, of course! They had a _proper_ university there, and they knew how to _appreciate_ cheese.)

.

Agatha was in the library when the alarm sounded, curled up in an armchair by the window, trying to commit the biology textbook’s diagram of Schlotz’s Second Reanimation Procedure to memory without giving herself a headache. It involved a lot of staring into space and hoping the image settled into her brain without too much thought. A couple stray notes danced in the way, the lingerings of an old lullaby Uncle Barry used to hum that she could never quite remember. Trying to catch it was like wading through burning molasses behind her eyes, so she did her best to ignore the trill.

The shrieking klaxon blasted it out, striking right through to her nerves with a bright spike all its own. At least other students winced as well. But they all knew evacuation drills, Agatha included; the whole school had to practice monthly. She closed her book and walked—never run, never panic (her head hurt if she panicked)—to the closest door out to the central quad. The other students in the library did the same, with varying amounts of complaining.

Outside there was panic, screaming and running and explosions in the sky—and wasps spilling out of the main laboratory building. Slicing and stabbing, shining carapaces flicked with red blood. But- but Dr. Beetle had said it would be _okay_. Were people hurt? Was anyone still inside? And with the Baron here—they were going to be in so much _trouble_ —

Clanks were converging from all sides, firing, but they moved so slowly compared to the flashing bugs. Agatha had never thought the clanks moved slowly before. Where was Mr. Tock?

Explosions in the sky. He was fighting a trio of Wulfenbach airships—fighting and falling back, smoking, burning. He was half the campus away but she fancied she could smell the frying grease of his gears. The ground trembled as he stumbled against a lecture hall, crushing half the edifice. Why was he fighting them? What was going _on?_

A hand grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side, to a stop. “And why are _you_ running back to the scene of the crime?”

The Baron’s son, Gilgamesh. Agatha stared at him, eyes wide. His were narrowed and sharp, dangerous. A little wild. She hadn’t even realized she was running. Maybe it explained why everything else was rushing by so quickly.

A jägermonster hovered at his shoulder, too many teeth. “Hyu is comink?”

“In a moment. Go.” Gilgamesh waved him on. The jäger nodded, and raced towards the wasps with a roar, taken up by the whole horde of monsters that suddenly flowed around them. But the Baron’s son didn’t let her go.

“Well?” he demanded, and shook her by the arm. “What did you know about this?”

Agatha’s biology textbook wasn’t a raft, she knew that. But she clung to it like it could carry her anyway. Calm. She had to stay calm. She swallowed against the familiar weight of her locket. Uncle Barry had said it would keep her safe.

She wanted to burst into tears. “I– Dr. Beetle– he said it would be _okay_.”

“ _Minions_ ,” Gilgamesh muttered like an oath. “Why were you running back to the lab?”

“I–I could help.” She hadn’t thought about it. “I only just heard—”

“You didn’t go back there after we all left?”

“I was in the library.” Tears were creeping down her cheeks but she couldn’t let herself get worked up or she really _would_ start crying, head splitting with the stress. There was too much going on, too many people jostling and screaming under the bright sun, and the roaring jägers and gleaming wasps and she wanted to do _something_ but she just couldn’t keep track of it all—

Gilgamesh’s expression softened. “Don’t worry, Miss—Clay, was it? As soon as everyone’s out of range, we’re going to blast the hive engine to smithereens from the air. We came prepared. All you need to do to help is get away.” His grip on her arm shifted to something supportive rather than detaining. “Can you do that?”

“Yes?” Agatha didn’t mean it to be a question before she said it.

He smiled encouragingly, if a little fanged. “Great! My father’s setting up a perimeter around the inner campus. Just get back through the library and you’ll be safe.”

And with a flash of a grin he was gone, coat flaring, pushing stray students back as he plunged after the jägers into the horde of wasps. Agatha blinked. She hadn’t even noticed he was holding a sword, but he used it like an extension of his arm.

Perimeter. Safety. She could concentrate enough for that. (She wasn’t sure the Baron could be defined as “safe”, but relative to _wasps_ …)

She turned on her heel and ran back the way she had come, catching the door swinging shut just behind a handful of other students who had had the same thought.

About halfway back through the Encyclopediary, the building shook, hard enough that Agatha only narrowly avoided being hit by several falling tomes. She failed to dodge several more. She tripped as she flinched, and lay still for a moment when she hit her head on a bookcase. She barely noticed the pain, amid the overwhelmed panic already grinding in her mind. Calm. None of the other students waited for her. She hadn’t felt the ground tremble like that since—

Since she was twelve? (Ow, her _head_.) It had been winter, Mr. Tock had slipped on the ice.

Agatha struggled back to her feet and plowed on, leaping over the books now scattered on the floor. The encyclopedias were color-coded by edition; they spread in successive rainbow arcs, blue then green then crocus gold. Outside, in the study hall, was more chaos, textbooks and chairs and tables all overturned. Someone, she thought distantly, would have to pick those up later. Unless everybody was dead or shamblers.

She half-expected a wasp to burst out at her from behind a bookcase or under a table at any moment, skull gleaming, hooked claws scything. She clutched at her locket—

It was gone. Her mother’s locket, from Uncle Barry, with the pictures of her birth parents. It was supposed to keep her safe, and it was everything she had of them.

She was running back before she thought about it. Any second a carapace would appear, scything, chattering death, or the Baron would blow up the building to stop it. But Uncle Barry had said never to take the locket off and it must be in jumble of encyclopedias on the floor, it _must_ —

It was. She grabbed it up and spun back, one hand holding her skirt up for extra speed. Any second… (her head hurt, but not too badly, and she was too scared to notice much.)

It was almost anticlimactic when a wasp did appear, crashing through a study room door. Beyond it she could see the wall to the outside partially caved in, letting in the bright sun and a rush of cold air. There wasn’t anything else out there. This one must be a stray.

Agatha hesitated; the wasp didn’t. It lunged at her and she thought she was going to scream as she stumbled back, tripping over a table leg this time. Instead she shouted. “Leave me alone!”—a cry, morelike, half a sob; desperate, almost whining, like this was some boy pulling her pigtails in the schoolyard.

The wasp stopped. It ducked its head with a hiss and scuttled away on all fours, back towards the Encyclopediary. Agatha stared after it.

There would be more. She had to think—it hurt, but she had to think. The fastest way out of the library, to the opposite side with the school wall and the Baron, was through the snow tunnels. They went to the labs, too, but there had been so many wasps in the courtyard, surely they had gone out, not down. And the flying slavers would go the same way…

Agatha fumbled her locket back on as she ran, so she could have two hands again. It hadn’t broken, just gotten unclasped. It was a sturdy clasp but she wasn’t usually avalanched on by encyclopedias after being thrown down by the earthquake of a falling megaclank. (Oh, Mr. Tock. What did the Empire think it was _doing?_ )

There were more wasps rounding the corner when she reached the winding stairs by the reference desk. Agatha didn’t-scream again, just winced at the spike of fear that push red-hot against her skull and pinned her breath against the back of her throat. She didn’t have time to set up any sort of barricade, even if it could possibly have worked. She took the stairs two, three at a time, and only momentum kept her from tripping with every step. Her pounding hob-nailed boots didn’t drown out the clattering of razor-edged claws, and she could see the wasps’ shadows flashing above her in the dim stairwell lanterns.

The tunnel access door was open at the bottom; she saw it a split second before something metal shrieked past her head and slammed into a wasp half a flight behind her. There was a horrible crack of carapace, a grinding insectoid screech, and another half dozen flying bolts followed the first, every one hitting a mark. Some wasps stopped, some tumbled over the side of the banister.

“Agatha!”

“Adam! Lilith!”

Agatha tumbled into her parents’ arms. Adam kept shooting at the wasps on the stairs, tall and scowling with intent, but Lilith enfolded her in a tight hug, warm and secure, smelling faintly of canning gel and beeswax. And bug goop, as she spared one hand from Agatha’s shoulders to blast one of Adam’s downed wasps, which was trying to crawl brokenly towards them. Its head exploded with green blood.

Lilith tucked the death ray (when had _Lilith_ gotten a _death ray?_ ) back in her belt and pulled Agatha through the door. Adam dropped a last couple wasps and slammed the door behind them. The tunnel was only a little wider than the stairwell but warmer, at least, and lighter, though that was mostly from the bioluminescent mold on the heating pipes above their heads. These tunnels were used for maintenance and for getting between campus buildings when the snow was thick, or someone had loosed noxious chemicals outside again.

Lilith held Agatha at arm’s length and looked her up and down, same as if she’d just come home from the park with scabbed knees and dirt on her dress. Lilith wasn’t even dressed any differently from the morning, the same old dress she always wore when it was going to be a messy day in the kitchen. But her stance was wrong, and Adam’s—they almost thrummed with tension, on the verge of a fight at any moment.

Agatha was on the verge of collapse. Only Lilith’s hands on her shoulders kept her up.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt? Did Klaus—the Baron—”

Agatha burst into tears. “No! I mean, no, I’m not hurt. But I need– I need…”

She clutched her temples, full of cotton and burning.

Adam’s comforting hand rubbed up and down her back, large and familiar. She took a deep breath, and then another. She couldn’t have a headache now, she _couldn’t_. There were _wasps_.

There were scratching noises against the door. It was blast-proof metal, thick and lead-lined for all that it was in the bottom of the University relatively far from the labs—this was a research school, for sparks. All doors were sturdy.

But this one hadn’t locked properly in years, everyone knew it. It wasn’t even supposed to lock, because the library was always open. Adam was leaning against it but there was scratching and clicking on the other side.

Adam pulled his hand back and made some signs too fast for her to read. But Lilith nodded. There was a hard set to her jaw that Agatha had never seen before, and she wasn’t wearing her eye patch.

“We’ll meet you at Tobe’s,” she said, and reached past Agatha to squeeze his hand.

Adam smiled, faint under a furrowed brow, and gave her a thumbs up.

“Wha– but– Adam!” Agatha cried as Lilith pulled her away. “Lilith! What’s going on? Why are we leaving him?”

She looked back. Adam waved goodbye, smiling gently in the odd mix of yellow lamplight and reddish glow-mold. He shoulders were set firmly against the door.

“He’ll catch up,” Lilith said fiercely, and tugged her around a corner.

“But– how?”

For a moment, Lilith’s flash of a smile seemed real, before it settled back into the same grim line. “We’ve been in worse situations.”

There were so many more questions bursting in her mind but she couldn’t talk and run at the same time; Lilith was already half-dragging her. Agatha bunched up her skirts and tried to concentrate on moving without concentrating hard enough to make her headache worse. It wasn’t like she was solving a problem. This was doable. Half a moment’s pause at a fork gave her an extra breath while Lilith listened for something Agatha couldn’t hear, and then they were racing again through the dim red light, like the air was filtered through blood.

More twists and turns, backtracking fast when they heard skittering noises at the end of a tunnel, and then voices down another. Agatha was lost in a minute, even though she’d walked these tunnels almost every year of her life. Everything was too much, too fast, and they’d left Adam behind and there were wasps and the Baron had destroyed Mr. Tock—She didn’t have time to wonder how Lilith knew where to go, either.

Three tunnels intersected at a ladder to the surface, lit once more by a real gaslamp as well as the mold. There was already someone on it, tall and broad-shouldered, pressing something against the ceiling. They looked like explosives.

The figure looked over as he heard their pounding footsteps and snapped, “All civilians are supposed to be– _Judy?_ ”

Lilith skidded to a halt, holding Agatha behind her with one hand. “Klaus.”

The Baron. Agatha hadn’t recognized him without his coat, though really that was ridiculous—he had the same rich, dark clothes as before, the same violent shock of white hair, the same intimidating bark to his voice. There was an edge of wildness there, too, and in the cant of his spine, just like his son—cold iron about to spring into action, nitroglycerin on the verge of explosion.

“Klaus, how could you,” Lilith was saying, almost sadly. Resigned.

“’How could–‘ he repeated incredulously. “Where have you _been?_ Is Punch here? _Bill? Barry?_ ” He glanced around like he expected them to pop out of the adjacent tunnels.

“Barry came back.”

Agatha knew that tone. That tone that meant the listener was in for a heap of trouble. She pressed against her mother’s side.

“Is he _here?_ ” The Baron sounded almost plaintive.

“We aren’t telling you anything.”

Lilith edged sideways as she spoke, pushing Agatha towards a tunnel mouth. “Go,” she ordered quietly. “Run, and don’t stop until you get to Mechanicsburg if you have to. The Castle will help you.”

“Oh no,” growled the Baron. He jumped down from the ladder, still too tall on the ground. “You do _not_ get to disappear again. I thought you were all _dead_ , and I want an _explanation_.”

He spared Agatha a flicker of a glance. “The girl too, for this incident. Thank you for picking her up, I suppose.”

“Go to hell, Klaus,” Lilith said levelly and drew her death ray again. “Agatha, _go_.”

Agatha was staring at Lilith, aghast and confused. Lilith was glaring at the Baron, stance set like she was ready to fight him personally, right here in the orange-tinged tunnel while overhead wasps swarmed and Empire ships destroyed Transylvania Polytechnic. The Baron was glaring right back.

None of them were paying attention to the tunnels. None of them saw the dull gleam of carapaces or heard the scratching of claws, until a wasp rushed in and its bladed forearm was sticking through Lilith’s abdomen.

“ _No!_ ” Agatha and the Baron shouted at once. He had a gun in his hand before Agatha could blink, and the wasp’s head exploded in a burst of green.

Lilith shot back at him, and shoved Agatha away. “ _Run!_ ”

The Baron ducked her shot and came forward, still firing. There were more wasps at Agatha’s heels. She stumbled past him, and clung to the ladder as she climbed, hands slippery with wasp blood flecked with purple where Lilith’s had splashed. Behind her, the Baron was still shouting, and Lilith was shouting back, and their voices both echoed against the old stone walls and metal pipes and crash and clicking screeches of wasps.

Aboveground it was bright again; there were more people, students milling and Wulfenbach soldiers pressing them back, and Agatha ran through them all with tears streaming down her face and red hot wires against the backs of her eyes. She couldn’t _think_ but she didn’t need to, just run, run and keep running through soldiers and clanks and the streets of Beetlesburg where everyone was still milling or running as well. Some still screaming—because wasps, because the Baron was taking the town, because the University was on fire somewhere behind her (she didn’t look but she could smell the smoke, oily and dense with laboratory chemicals.) Someone might have told her to stop but she didn’t hear over the blinding pounding in her head, and of her heart, and her feet against the pavement. _Run_.

She ran.


	2. On The Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Agatha sees some of the countryside.

Something small and knobby was poking into Agatha’s back. And into her side, and her legs through her skirts, and her arms pillowed beneath her head. Potatoes. She recognized the smell before the shapes. She’d never fallen asleep on potatoes before, but she’d peeled more than could be counted in the kitchen with Lilith.

Lilith. Agatha sat up, shedding a tarp. Purple blood on a starched white shirt, tearing chitin claws—

“Hey, miss, you feeling be’er?”

The question came from the man in the driver’s seat, leaning back to look through the window at the front of the cloth-covered wagon. He was dark-skinned, barrel-chested, and Agatha had only seen him for a few seconds before in her life.

“Oh. Um, yes.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. At least she didn’t have a headache. But she usually didn’t, first waking up. “Is it safe for me to come out, then?”

“No wasps or Baron’s men here!” he said cheerfully.

There wasn’t much of anything here, she realized as she joined him on the front seat. It wasn’t quite the Wastelands, but it wasn’t thriving fields, either. There were other carts behind—Agatha could hear them, though she didn’t look back—but none ahead. Only scrub and dirt, packed in low hills, and the rutted, rocky road. Their own wagon bumped and rumbled so much that she felt off-balance just sitting.

But the wagoner looked her over with a discerning eye, and tapped a finger on his shoulder. “You migh’ wan’ t’ change outta tha’ dress, if you don’ wan’ questions asked.”

Agatha looked down at her own shoulder and saw green and green, wasp blood drying to the color of bile on her emerald lab frock. No purple, at least; that was—

Droplets on her chest, still bright against the green (on Lilith’s chest, staining the cotton.) And Adam had stayed behind, holding the door…

“I don’t have anything else to change into.”

“Tha’s all right,” the wagoner said kindly. “I picked the missus up a dress she been wan’ing in town. I’m sure she won’ mind iffen you borrow i’ first.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.” The polite reply was automatic. Agatha didn’t want to think how distraught she looked, that he offered her first go at a dress he’d bought as a present for his wife.

“Please, miss.” He glanced back and forth across the road, then up in the air and back to Agatha. He lowered his voice. “I don’ know what you’re abou’ an’ I don’ need to. Bu’ Tobe’s a sharp man for one who’s half horse, an’ I don’ reckon he’d offer me two months’ free stabling for no questions asked iffen you wan’ed to catch folks’ eye.”

Tobe was a stableman at the stalls-for-rent by Beetlesburg’s South Gate, a construct friend of Agatha’s parents. He was the one who’d put her on the wagon, hidden among the potatoes. Said something to the driver that she’d missed though her tears and shrieking headache.

The wagoner glanced skyward again, over his shoulder, and Agatha followed his gaze. They were far enough from Beetlesburg that she couldn’t make out any buildings, but the smoke was plain enough. Much thicker than before, oily and dark, and still swarming with Wulfenbach ships.

 _We’ll blast it all to smithereens_ , the Baron’s son had said. But Lilith had said they’d been in worse situations (when, Agatha couldn’t fathom), and she had been with the Baron, and it wasn’t as if they would blast anything while _he_ was in there. (Though Lilith had shot at him.) (And why would Baron Wulfenbach trouble himself to rescue a piano teacher.) (And Adam had been even farther back, and he had waved…)

Agatha didn’t even remember a blast. She felt ashamed, and so, so tired of herself. She hadn’t fainted from a headache since she was ten.

The wagoner’s wife’s dress—Alice’s, when Agatha asked, and his name was Ham—was a pretty red muslin thing with bows.

“You don’t sound like your from Mechanicsburg,” she said while she changed within the hidden safety of the wagon. Staying upright was even harder with clothes half off and potatoes rolling around her feet, but she managed. At least the dress fit, if a little tightly.

“I should hope not,” said Ham, offended. “I’m a Coppernicker, born an’ raised. He twitched like he’d started to glance back at her, then remembered she was changing. His voice turned wary. “Tha’s where you’re looking t’ go, isn’ it? Tobe said your folks’d be mee’ing you.”

He clearly wasn’t sure what to make of her. Carding dried wasp blood out of her hair, Agatha wasn’t sure either. Everything since the morning seemed to have happened in bits and pieces. Flashes of sound too loud and color too bright, and pain in her temples.

She rubbed the trilobite pattern on her locket: familiar grooves, familiar soft weight. Much kinder than the familiar strain and sear of thinking too hard. And she couldn’t start crying now, wouldn’t, because—

“Yes, you can drop me off at the—the oak tree by the eastern field.” That’s what Tobe had said, hand reassuring on her shoulder as he tucked her under the tarp. That Adam and Lilith would be fine, that they’d said to go to Coppernick, to pull the lever in the oak tree by the eastern field and hide and wait for them to catch up.

Because they were fine. They had to be. Agatha squeezed her eyes shut as if it was the bright sunlight that hurt her as she came out to the wagonseat again. They had been in worse situations before. Baron Wulfenbach was supposed to _save_ people. Adam had _not_ waved goodbye.

She forced a smile as the wagon bounced and shivered through another rut. Agatha was very good at faking smiles. Every time someone asked how her head was today.

“So tell me about Coppernick.” It was always polite, Lilith had said, to show interest in one’s conversational partner. “Is there are market for you to sell all these potatoes?”

.

“I have to go.”

Agatha lay on a thin cot and stared at the ceiling of her little bunker. It was mostly made of roots—the ceiling, but also the one-room bunker altogether. Minus, thankfully, the cot. But the Secret Society of the Sacred Squirrel had clearly taken great pains to weave this place from the roots of the oak above, and fill the gaps with stones. It was pleasantly cool in the summer heat, if a touch damp, and during the day, carefully positioned mirrors brought down enough sunlight to make the place almost homey.

Now, however, it was night, and only the faintest starlight filtered down. There was a lamp, with a little kerosene left, but Agatha had blown it out hours ago. She had meant to sleep.

“I have to go.” The whisper seemed to echo, though there was little enough room for it.

Saying it aloud made the proposition more real, but no less appealing. The sedimentary layers of dust on the floor suggested there used to be many more supplies than the single box of nuts and dried fruit Agatha had found, but there was enough to last at least two more days. And there was the lamp, and sunlight, and a fresh trickle of water running down one wall that she suspected had been diverted from the adjacent field’s irrigation trenches. Though she hadn’t gone to investigate. She hadn’t gone outside since she’d arrived.

“No—”

She couldn’t say the rest, yet. Her breath was already jagged, and her eyes damp. Staring too hard at the ceiling she couldn’t see in the dark. She’d stared enough in the last four sunlit days to imagine it anyway, the oak’s roots crosshatched together, twisted and curved in geometric patterns around the central, carved figure of a stylized squirrel. The pamphlets Agatha had found with the nuts and fruit explained that every waystation of the Secret Society of the Sacred Squirrel was a church to the holy animal as well, for the most safe trees were those a squirrel had blessed with its presence, and anywhere the Most Revered Rodent nested could only, obviously, be a temple to its glory. Underground, of course—for “[t]hough a true-hearted sciurolyte may flit from waystation to waystation like the noble Squirrel crosses the treetops, the crowns themselves are reserved for Their just personages, to whom we non-squirrels can only look up with awe and reverence.”

They were very nice pamphlets. Some proud local sciurolyte had slipped in a couple fliers for the Coppernick Spud-Powered Telescope as well. All were clearly meant for distribution, and, like the lamp, food, and cot on which she was now resting, it was equally clear that none had been touched in at least Agatha’s lifetime. Based on the accumulation of dust.

Because nobody was here, except her. Nobody was here, nobody had been here in two decades, and nobody—

“I’ll go to Mechanicsburg.” She declared it boldly to the darkness. That was what Lilith had said: _Don’t stop until you get to Mechanicsburg._ But Agatha had stopped, because Tobe had said Lilith had left another instruction at another time, and, given the choice between waiting for her parents at the next town over and plunging blindly, alone, towards the City of Monsters, when she’d never been outside Beetlesburg on her own…. Had never been this far outside the city walls even _with_ Adam and Lilith. There had been a couple school trips, field studies, but she had always stayed home. Too risky, with her condition, Dr. Beetle had said, and Lilith had repeated firmly and Adam had shaken his head. They always looked after her. Had always—

Tears stung behind Agatha’s eyes and her stomach turned in knots. It had been four days. Four days of nuts and dried fruit, damp sunlight and carved squirrels and waiting.

She breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, because the last thing she needed was to fret herself into a headache. There was already one nudging forward for the sheer crime of staying up late.

Four days. She still didn’t say it, didn’t make it real, but a subvocalization reader would have picked up in the dark:

_Nobody is coming._

.

It was easier than Agatha had expected, to catch a ride. She was back in her green work dress—she had traded Ham the wagoner back before she’d said goodbye, and managed to clean most of the stains with the water in the Squirrelian hideout. They still showed, but not recognizably as blood.

She took to the main road out of town, and this wasn’t the Wastelands—there was enough traffic for her to be choosey in whom she flagged down. Not the cart marked with a Danger: Sometimes Radioactive sticker, though it looked like right now it was only carrying hay. And to the pair of young men who whooped and asked if she’d like a ride, she gave her coldest glare and made sure they could see the knife she had scavenged from the Secret Society waystation. They moved on.

She ended up with a small family, a young couple with their toddler and infant who said they’d be happy to take her to the next town if she’d mind the children on the way. They were Beetlesburgers too; Matilde explained that they were going to visit her parents in Delhaven until the troubles in the city had ended. Agatha admitted that she was a student, and fibbed that she was trying to make her way home to—not Mechanicsburg; she didn’t know why it mattered but Lilith had whispered the instruction like she didn’t want the Baron to overhear. Gaffburg, the next town down the road from Delhaven.

She shared her small store of fruit and nuts with three-year-old Magrat to keep her quiet, and told her every Heterodyne Boys story she could think of without prying her brain so hard she brought on a headache. It was a pleasant ride.

She reached Gaffburg in the rickety cart of an itinerant cobbler, a friend of Matilde’s father. From there, a small merchant caravan headed for Passholdt took her on because she could wash dishes and help with accounting. It wasn’t Mechanicsburg but it was closer, and she didn’t have a single piece of food or coin to her name, and only the one set of clothes.

The road was smoother here, a regular trade route, but still Agatha felt, every second, as if she were on the verge of falling. The balance of the world wasn’t right.

Two days into the journey, creeping up the Carapathian foothills, the lead driver squinted into the distance and asked, “Them carrion birds?”

His partner shaded her eyes and peered up the slope, and farther up. Then she pulled a spyglass from her belt and checked again.

“No,” she said grimly. “That’s airships, and they’re dropping to attack. Wulfenbach’s taking the pass.”

Five minutes later the wagons were all halted, and most of the outriders had galloped back as well. Guards and traders alike stood in a gaggle, passing around telescopes and talking in a range of curious chatter to low worry. Agatha took her own turn with a glass mostly for form’s sake: she didn’t need to see the Baron take another town. She wondered whether he would set fire to Passholdt, too. Whether, if she closed her eyes, she could hear the screams, smell the acrid smoke. The wind turned into the blast of Lilith’s death ray past her head, blood splattering on her dress again—

Deep breaths. Calm. There was no danger here, on a fresh summer day on the open road. (There was always danger on the open road, but they were four wagons and a dozen mounted guards strong. Agatha had nothing to fear.)

“Company, to order!”

Trading Mistress Sayre’s voice cut through the gabble. She wasn’t a physically imposing woman, looked more like the second or third doll in of a matryoshka set than a retired soldier turned successful cloth merchant. But her parade ground bark betrayed the truth.

Now she stood on a convenient rock, one hand on her hip. The other brandished a spyglass like a baton.

“I don’t know what you’re all standing around for!” she called. “You never seen a little fight before? Soldiers still need clothing! Townsfolk still need clothing, especially when they’ve had their homes and livelihoods burned down! This is war, kids! You die, or you make a hell of a profit!”

There was cheering. Agatha joined half-heartedly, and tried not to bite her lip too hard. She was never much one for cheering anyway. But there was really no way for her to slip away unnoticed, much less make it safely back to any other town…

It was silly. It was paranoid. (The Baron had known Lilith, though he called her the wrong name, and she had known him. And she’d told Agatha to run and said something about Uncle Barry, and the Baron had known him, too, by the right name, and maybe Agatha could understand if she remembered in more than fragments but she didn’t want to, couldn’t think about it; the splinters hurt enough. And tears led to headaches, and more tears, the familiar kind but still not welcome, and—)

It was paranoid because when they were stopped at a roadblock a day later, the Wulfenbach soldiers barely spared her a glance. Just as much as was necessary to hold a strange, six-legged weasel up to her face, let it sniff her a couple times, then move on to the next person. It screamed at two of the guards, and Belariel, the driver who had first seen the ships and thought they were vultures. Soldiers took them by the arms and led them back past the barricade, into a ship waiting much higher up on the slope. There were jägers guarding the doors.

“They’re infected with a new disease, ma’am,” the corporal in charge said wearily, in the face of Mistress Sayre’s indignation. “No, I can’t say what, I’m not a spark. But the Baron is studying—”

“Horseshit,” she cut over him. “I know horseshit for civilians when I hear it. What disease? Where the hell are you taking my men? I pay my taxes. I don’t make trouble. Can’t an innocent trader—”

“Couldn’t say,” he repeated stoically. “But Passholdt’s quarantined. Most everyone’s…dead.” He shuddered a little. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

Mistress Sayre gave him a frown that could have cowed a raging tiger. But the man had a winged tower on his cap and jägermonsters at his back. He didn’t so much as twitch.

The caravan turned back, and took the next fork for the long detour to Balan’s Gap. But Agatha got off at the first town they passed through, with four days’ pay and a kindly given bag of cheese sandwiches. Even if the soldiers hadn’t looked at her and the weasel hadn’t screamed at her, if the Baron was taking mountain passes…maybe there was a real disease and maybe there wasn’t. He didn’t need to have destroyed Mr. Tock to fight the wasps.

An old farmer drove her to the river in exchange for a couple sandwiches, and she got passage on a logging boat for the rest of her coins. But that didn’t last—she should have known it wouldn’t work, stupid mistake; she could barely run without tripping; what good was she ushering tree trunks down the raging Oner. They dropped her off at a two-bit village, back down in the foothills again, rather than leaving her to starve in the mountains, and Agatha counted it considerate because they’d had to fish her out of the water twice. In the single afternoon she’d been aboard.

.

She got a job at an inn, the only inn in town, sweeping floors and turning beds and serving drinks in the bar. There were two girls working there already, the innkeep’s daughter and another girl from TPU. It was a small inn in a small town, not really big enough for three maids, but the innkeep was kind and Agatha and Susanna were both just passing through. Rachel was less satisfied—it was her bedroom they all shared, pallets on the attic floor. But they shared her workload as well, and Agatha didn’t begrudge cleaning an extra share of trenchers while Rachel snuck off to dally with the tailor’s boy. He had, Rachel said proudly, been courting her for nearly six months, and Agatha wondered when seventeen had started seeming young.

Susanna was better company. Agatha had never met her at school—Susanna was two years ahead, would have finished her degree this year if it weren’t for…

Neither spoke much about the last two weeks. Just the years before that, classes they had both taken, professors endured, which shops were best for buying dresscloth or cogwheels or pneumatic needles. Susanna, ice-blond and dimpled and just a few inches taller than Agatha, was a medical student majoring in veterinary medicine. Her favorite color was light blue, her favorite food _fika_ pastries, and when she got home, she meant to lie about her degree and open a “licensed” animal clinic on her family’s farm. She also snored like an ice bear, but Agatha rarely slept well anyway—dreams kept her awake, half-remembered flashes.

It was…nice. It took barely a day to settle into the rhythm of things, chores in the mornings and guests in the evenings, and cleaning-up after. The town was extraordinarily peaceful after Beetlesburg and TPU, not a single spark in residence. Giant spiders in the forest that edged it on two sides, including just behind the inn, but they were peaceful so long as travellers gave offerings at the treeline, and they kept away anyone less polite.

And Agatha had rarely spent time with girls her own age before. Now she found herself chatting freely, even laughing once or twice. Susanna had a quick wit, and Rachel an unfailing good cheer so long as she could visit her beau.

Of course there were always the headaches, lying at wait at the edge of her temples. But it didn’t take much concentration to mop floors or change sheets, or even scour the incumbent, possibly sentient, slime mold colony from the water barrel. Dedication and a strong stomach, but little concentration.

Then the Wulfenbach ship sank out of the sky, light burning in the barrels of the cannons even as the balloon cast its shadow over the ground. The sides were stenciled with winged keeps, but someone had decorated the front with a grinning, blood-red skull.

“All right!” A woman’s gleeful voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Everyone who doesn’t want to die a painful and horrible death had better come outside and do what I say right now!”

Agatha froze. One hand still held a soggy rag over the stone bar counter she’d been cleaning; the other crept, subconsciously, to her locket. _It will keep you safe._ The few customers in the bar at midday cast each other worried glances and started shuffling towards the door.

Trembling, Agatha fell in behind them. Her locket rose and fell with deep breaths. Calm, calm, can’t have an attack now, not again—there couldn’t possibly be wasps here, could there? No, not if there was only one ship—

She jumped half a kilometer when a heavy hand fell on her shoulder and Inkeep Zekial’s rough voice said, “No, you stay in, girls. They’re just looking to scare us.”

He had a hand on Susanna’s arm as well. She was chewing her lip with nerves, but her expression spoke more of determination as she stared at the ship, now settling into the town square just outside.

Zekial shoved them both back, towards Rachel hovering anxiously in the kitchen door.

“You three go upstairs,” he ordered, “and stay put.” He was sterner than Agatha had ever seen him, not the barest hint of a smile behind his shaggy beard.

They ended up at the window, of course they did. A considerable part of Agatha didn’t want to watch, wanted to bury her head under the pillow on this fresh-made bed and cry. Do simple sums or just watch the lights on the inside of her eyelids until the fear and pain went away. Like always.

A woman bounded from the ship with a white uniform, red shirt to match the skull, and long black hair that whipped behind her like a hunting cat’s tail. At her heels, slower and warier, came a gaggle of soldier with twice as many weapons as bodies, even counting the turret clanks as among the crew.

“So who’s in charge here?”

There wasn’t much talking among the nervous townspeople. Her voice carried nearly as well as it had by speaker. They replied with mutters and glances, particularly at Mikkel, the carpenter who doubled as the town’s mayor when they needed one to sign forms. He stepped forward, nudged by several elbows.

“Ah…you, madam?”

“Hey, you got it right!” She tucked a gun back into her belt, that Agatha, for one, couldn’t remember seeing her draw or level at the carpenter. She gestured at her ship instead. “Just for that, I’m not even going to shoot _you!_ ”

Instead, a cannon muzzle poking out the side of the ship, already seething with plasma swiveled toward the inn and let loose.

Agatha didn’t remember screaming or falling. Just coughing and light and heat, heat everywhere, light too bright, coughing from stinging smoke and landing too hard on her chest. The first floor was stone but the debris of the second was wood, now fire, all around her on the too-hot granite.

Rachel was coughing, too; crawling towards the door. Where the door used to be. Now there were flames, and part of the stone wall shattered in—but not enough, low enough, to make a new opening. There was shouting behind it, unless that was just the fire roaring. Agatha inched after her anyway, dress torn and hands and knees cuts and bruised and searing on the burning stones. At least one rib broken, she thought. Glasses long gone.

Also missing— also missing— Susanna. She had ducked first, pulled away. Where—?

Agatha tried to call but she was too choked, even close to the floor. Scattered furniture blazed on stones like a cooking pot—no doors open, no air. Rachel didn’t hear her either.

A flap of cloth, familiar pale blue, caught her eye on the counter. Catching fire, caught on a nail on the counter like its wearer might have landed and rolled off. Agatha crept towards it.

Susanna was beneath the counter, curled up on the hot stones. One leg stuck out, not-straight. Broken.

“Be awake, be awake,” Agatha begged, shaking her. “Wake up, please, wake—”

“I’m fine,” Susanna whispered hoarsely. She grabbed Agatha’s collar and tugged, ripping it further but pulling her down as well. “Stay, the counter is safe. Won’t burn.”

“No, no.” Agatha shook her head, coughing, and tugged back. “The ceiling—it’s not done. Falling.” The remaining beams crackled and groaned above them now, and the counter shook with resonance. Fire in the kitchen fed on flour and oil, and soon it would sweep forward, hungry for more.

Susanna gestured at her leg. Agatha gritted her teeth and hung the other girl’s arm over her bruised shoulder. If the townspeople cleared a path at the door—if Rachel had found a way out—

Susanna tried to pull back, push her away, mouthing _Go!_ and something in Danish. Agatha dragged her along anyway. They crawled haphazardly, below the worst of the smoke, dragging Susanna’s leg. Calm, calm. Don’t think, just breathe—no, just move. Breathing was coughing, eyes watering; Agatha didn’t realize she was crying until she saw Susanna’s own tears tracking through the ash on her face.

The kitchen raged, the ceiling growled, the front door burned, and the rest of the walls were too shrouded with smoke to see. But there was—there was a weak spot by the stairs, burning rubble collapsed enough to let the smoke twist towards daylight. Agatha moved towards it, squinting, crying,

Then a shriek sounded from above, the last bearings’ surrender. Agatha felt it more than she heard it—a rush of hot air, a scream of a splinter down her arm, blood before pain. Susanna’s hands on her back, _shoving_ —

And she was stumbling, rolling, a meter away; crumpling, staring back, at the Danish girl’s fading eyes and the blood bright red against her pale blue dress— Fire screamed around them, too hot to think. Chemical smoke and kitchen oil and charring flesh, blood red and green and purple. Charring flesh, pierced through the chest; death rays’ hot air rushing. The roar of a crowd and a fire, breaking a door, screaming and running. Agatha’s head ached, aflame. The stone counter still stood, stalwart. Susanna’s hand extended with her last push, last wave—wave of flame flickering, devouring; waving goodbye. Push to safety in orange light blazing and nobody came back for Agatha because why? Why bother? Her head hurt so much. There was nobody, nobody left, the only respite a burning breath against the back of her neck as fire rushed past—

Out. Outside. Blue sky and green trees and nobody else to die. Fresh air.

Agatha ran again.

-

(Klaus scowled down at the body that had been laid on the table before him. “DuPree…”

“It was not my fault!” She was defensive, which meant she at least knew she had done _something_ wrong. “I only fired on _one_ building. How was I supposed to know it was the one she was in?”

“The idea is generally to not fire on any buildings at all.”

“Whatever.” She poked the coffin. “It’s the girl you wanted, right? Short, blond, TPU student…” She peered critically at the blackened corpse. “Can’t tell her eye color, but we found her glasses.”

It was true. There they were on the girl’s nose, burnt and broken like the rest of her. They looked correct, but that rest of her, skin bruised where it wasn’t crisped, was difficult to connect to the girl he remembered from Beetlesburg.

Still, she was about the right size, and a few wisps of pale yellow hair clung to her skull.

“It better be the right one,” DuPree added, “because she was hard to find even for me, with all the refugees around. I can hunt down pretty blondes all day if you want, but people are going to start thinking you’re weird.” She pursed her lips mock-critically. “Weirder than normal.”

Klaus sighed. It was most likely the same girl, and either way, it almost certainly didn’t matter. He was spinning fancies because she’d been a familiar shape next to Judy. But all logic dictated she was just another student assistant, whom his old friend had been rescuing because that was what Judy did. What they all used to do. Only he clearly didn’t anymore.

He couldn’t look back. The slavers had been swarming out from the laboratory; staying the bombardment to go back for Judy and Punch ( _presumably_ Punch; Klaus didn’t even _know_ , only that nobody had seen him, either)—it could have cost hundreds, thousands even more lives. It _would_ have.

He closed the coffin lid. “No, I’m sure we have something more suited to your delicate disposition.” Razing Passholdt to the ground, perhaps—though he wanted more data from it first. Clearing the Wastelands; _that_ was a never-ending chore. Like the rest of this damn Empire.

Captain DuPree grinned, and bounced a little. “Great! Hey, and I need someone sparky to come look at my cannons. Normally they can blow a place up all in one go, but that inn just caught fire, and took _ages_ to fall down. Is Gil around? He’s the one who set them up…”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISE the next chapter is happier. It's called "The Circus" and involved hugging and crying.


End file.
